It’s Friday, and we have five labor-related stories that you might not have heard yet:
🍔💰🍯 McDonald’s takes a bold stance on tipping:
If there will be a tipping point for “Tipping Culture,” it might be this.
McDonald’s feels so strongly about the unfairness of the tipped wage model that the fast-food giant exited a trade group amid a skirmish. At issue? McDonald’s is arguing that restaurants should pay all servers and bartenders minimum wage rather than, according to McDonald’s, unfairly benefit from being able to compensate those workers at a lower rate.
Is this the Burger Wars 2.0? At the very least, this puts the National Restaurant Association in the complicated position of losing its biggest lobbying ally. Additionally, unions do love to make tipping an easy “win” during organizing drives and contract negotiations, and the McDonald’s position against restaurants that tip could cause future fallout to watch.
🎯📚 The Target boycott is now officially backed by Big Labor:
In March of this year, Target became the target of a consumer-led boycott, and foot traffic dropped for several months due to customers voting with their wallet against the company’s DEI rollback. Rev. Jamal Bryant has received credit for launching the boycott with surprisingly few unions weighing in and none taking credit for its continuation.
That changed this month with the American Federation of Teachers stepping in to endorse the boycott during one of its most traditionally hectic periods, the back-to-school supply and clothing rush. Meanwhile, Target announced an incoming CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who joined the company in 2003 as an intern and will now have a chance at righting the sales ship.
🧠 🤖 OpenAI’s newly aggressive push into healthcare:
ChatGPT-5 users are uncovering new ways that the LLM can hallucinate, but CEO Sam Altman’s organization is moving past that chatter and onto other matters. To that end, OpenAI’s healthcare designs will move past powering products made by other companies and onto creating and launching its own technologies for both clinicians and consumers.
To accomplish these goals, OpenAI has made a pair of key hires. The new strategy, marketing, and rollout will be led by Doximity co-founder Nate Gross and ex-Instagram product leader Ashley Alexander. Nothing to see here yet, other than OpenAI working to influence more of the world.
⚖️🔨 💭 Union violence is no mere relic of the mob days:
Visions of Jimmy Hoffa and his alleged mob ties might pop into your head with this one. Rep. Scott Perry resurrected interest on the subject with his new bill, the Freedom from Union Violence Act. In doing so, the U.S. lawmaker from Pennsylvania aims to close a Hobbs Anti-Extortion Act loophole that was created by the Supreme Court’s 1973 Enmons ruling, which held that intimidation and violence committed in the furtherance of “legitimate union objectives,” including strike-based demands for higher wages, did not meet the threshold for Hobbs-level extortion.
If this sounds familiar, then you have a great memory. Perry isn’t the first legislator to attempt a bill of this nature. Over a decade ago, GOP lawmakers tried to close the same loophole, so we’ll see if the challenge goes differently this time around.
🌿 THC is safe in Texas, for now:
Yes, 50 states still have 50 different sets of cannabis regulations, which does not make for an easy balancing act for the industry’s employers. Things nearly got even wilder this week in Texas, where lawmakers took a third swing and missed in their attempt to prohibit hemp products that contain THC or similar intoxicating cannabinoids. Doing so would have upended a multi-billion dollar industry and tens of thousands of workers.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is still considering reclassification of cannabis, but dozens of Democratic U.S. representatives are not waiting for that to happen and moved forward with proposed legislation to federally legalize cannabis across the board.
Will those plans go up in smoke, too? Stay tuned.
